International movie star Gerard Depardieu recently moved to Belgium in order to avoid the 75% income tax on his earnings that French President Francois Hollande slapped on the “rich” after his election.

This didn’t sit well with the government and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called his decision to seek tax exile in Belgium “pathetic.”

“I am leaving because you consider success, creativity, talent, anything different are grounds for sanction,” the movie star, known for such classic French roles as Cyrano de Bergerac and the musketeer Porthos, wrote in correspondence to Ayrault published today in Le Journal du Dimanche. “I don’t expect to be pitied or praised but I reject the word pathetic.”

Depardieu, the latest celebrity to leave France after Socialist President Francoise Hollande introduced a slew of new levies since he was elected in May, said he has paid 145 million euros in taxes over the course of his 45-year working life that began at age 14. As well as a 75 percent tax on income over 1 million euros ($1.3 million) Hollande has also added new charges on capital gains, an increased tax on wealth, a boost to inheritance charges and an exit tax for entrepreneurs selling their companies.

The 63-year-old actor, who also played Jean Valjean, the post-revolution Frenchman convicted for stealing a loaf of bread, in a television version of “Les Miserables,” joins a wave of departures among entrepreneurs, businessmen and retirees, according to Philippe Kenel, a Geneva-based tax lawyer at Python, Schifferli, Peter & Associates.
‘Totally Scandalized’

“I am totally scandalized,” Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti said on BFM-TV today. “Gerard Depardieu is abandoning the battleground in the middle of the war against the crisis.”

The actor, who played Obelix in films on one of France’s most beloved fictional characters, said in the newspaper he paid tax at an 85 percent rate on his 2012 income.

“Pathetic, you said ‘pathetic?’ It’s pathetic,” Depardieu’s letter to the prime minister began. “I don’t have to justify the reasons for my choice, which are numerous and personal. Who are you to judge me in this way?”

I don’t think a 39% top rate will drive many rich people to leave the country. But that’s just the beginning. Some have advocated — most notably Paul Krugman — a top rate of 90% on every dollar earned above $1 million. If that happens, all bets are off and the prospect of a mass exodus of the most successful Americans may become a reality.

It’s already a reality in France. The rich are fleeing the country and President Hollande can only fume:

Depardieu’s exit comes as the French government is seeking to bolster revenue through taxes on large companies, Internet startups and private fortunes to make its budget-deficit target of 3 percent of gross domestic product next year. Hollande, the first Socialist president in France since 1995, has called on those “with the most to show patriotism” in tough times.

Governments only recourse is to eventually prevent people from leaving the country, or prevent their wealth from leaving. France will suffer the consequences of their class warfare policies by receiving less revenue than they expect while seeing a brain drain that will affect their ability to compete internationally.

6 Comments, 5 Threads

Other than the estate tax, this is something we don’t have in America (yet). There are a lot of old money families that don’t have much in the way of income but who have a great deal of wealth. Don’t be surprised when Obama starts pushing for a tax on net worth. It’ll no doubt be targeted on the poorly defined “rich” all all other economic envy taxes. That’s how the income tax was promoted back in 1913 and how the Alternative Minimum Tax was sold in the 1960s. Only, sooner or later, millions of ordinary Americans are surprised to learn they’re now part of “the rich” and subject to these taxes. Got a 401K or IRA? You’ll be taxed on the value eventually even before you start withdrawing from them. Own property? You’ll likely find a new federal property tax coming your way. Somehow, I doubt it’ll cover government pensions, though. Some animals are more equal than others.

No way, at least not in our current phase of marxism by boiling the lobster. The Kennedy’s, Kerry’s, Buffet’s of the world won’t allow it. They aren’t going to tax themselves. After the consolidation phase, of course, all wealth will be confiscated from the capitalists who failed to jump on the marxist bandwagon. Taxation won’t be necessary. But even then, K&K and Buffet will escape because they positioned themselves as commissars decades ago.

But personally, in a world before marxism, I would support a wealth tax above an income tax, for the simple reason that many wealthy people pay no taxes at all, whereas it is extremely difficult to avoid taxes on earned income. And who benefits society more, the families with a 100 million fortunes who take no risks, build nothing, but consume like aristocrats, or the business people who risk everything, earn millions a year, and in the process, provide jobs for thousands? Kerry and the Kennedy’s have been parasites for years, and in the case of the Kennedy’s, the original fortune was also created illegally. Kerry is the absolute worst kind of slug, abandoning the mother of his children to claim the fortune of a wealthy hag, Buffet is a different case, since he built his fortune, at least in the early days, honestly. Note also that Buffet claims, at least for public consumption, that he is going to give his fortune to charity, knowing of course, that it will be put to better use than if he pissed it down the statist drain.

What’s makes one believe the rich haven’t already moved substantial assets abroad?
Once the decision point has been reached to leave, aside from the assets transferred abroad the next decision point is too leave with the expectation of never returning. Once that decision is reached the remaining assets get sold, transferred out of the country and citizenship is renounced. No amount of exit tax will be collected from those who renounce citizenship and who plan to never step foot in the US again. The IRS cannot collect what it cannot attach. Absent a world government that applies to all other countries as well.
It is rather doubtful that few if any countries will allow US tax liens enforced in their countries on the newly arrived super wealthy.
Those countries can use and do need the money. And the US is hardly that co-operative in the reverse.

Somebody should research how much movement there has been within the US from high tax states to low tax states by wealthy people, and also how many wealthy US citizens have either left the country or created foreign businesses that allow them to escape almost all US taxation.

The numbers have to be staggering. After all, federal tax receipts fell by something like 40% after 2008. The decline in the number of employed people in the US wasn’t even close to that. And states like California and New Jersey that implemented onerous state taxes on the wealthy always see tax recepts go down by large amounts.

The whole tax debate is a house of cards. Any fool can figure out that people with large fortunes are going to figure out how to avoid taxes. The only way to get their money is the communist way; confiscate it. Which, btw, is exactly what will happen in our lifetimes in the US unless the brain dead voters get a clue before the right to vote is rescinded. Of course, the commisars will increase their wealth; only the people who aren’t in on the plan will lose their generational savings (hence the mad scramble by almost everybody with money to climb on board the obama express).